A Chorus Line

I've never seen a stage production of the long-running Broadway musical A Chorus Line. Some years back, I was flipping through TV channels and briefly landed upon the 1985 movie version of A Chorus Line, and distinctly remembered the one scene I saw. So when I noticed that the movie would be running on TCM a few months back, I decided to record it to watch later and do a review on here.

As with 42nd Street fifty years earlier, the movie deals with the creation of a new Broadway musical, and isn't that much about the musical itself, although both movies have one big production number presumably from the musical-within-a-musical to round out the movie. This version of the backstage musical centers on all of those struggling dancers who simply want a shot in the chorus line, at least as a possible chance at becoming bigger even though that's extremely unlikely. Just noticing how many dancers are on the stage as the movie opens compared to how many get selected for the chorus line -- never mind the percentage of chorus line members who graduate to bigger and better things -- should give one pause.

Overseeing the auditions is Zach Michael Douglas, the musical's choreographer, who has a reputation of being a difficult taskmaster, and that's after you've been selected for the chorus line. One can only imagine what the winnowing out process is like. As with All That Jazz, Zach has a bit of a complicated love life in the form of former lover Cassie (Alyson Reed). She left Zach some time back to try to go out to Hollywood and make it big there. But she didn't, and has returned to Broadway. Worse, she's willing to start at the bottom again, and that means auditioning for her former boyfriend, even though she's showed up late to the audition.

Eventually, Zach does whittle the throng down to a manageable number. But that's just the start of the difficulty for them. They're not in the chorus line yet, not by any stretch of the imagination. And to get that spot, they're going to have to be interviewed by Zach, but in front of all their fellow candidates. Not only that, but Zach has a way of asking very personal questions about why they want the job, when they first got the realization they wanted to be dancers, and even their sex lives. This being a movie about Broadway from after the Production Code disintegrated, you know at least one of the men is going to open up about when he learned he was gay. (Surprisingly, at least some of them seem to be straight.) The audition goes on like this, punctuated by a surprise or two along the way, until the final few members of the chorus line are selected.

I haven't seen a stage version of this, as I mentioned at the beginning. However, I've read a bit about it and can see why people who saw the stage version had some problems with the movie. The big one is that in the stage version, Zach is an unseen interlocutor. And to be honest, I can see how that would work better. It's bad enough to have to go through the process; it's worse not to be able to see the person humiliating you in front of an entire group. Apparently some of the songs from the stage show aren't in the movie, but that's an area I can't really comment on.

So is the movie version of A Chorus Line any good? I've always stated I'm not the biggest fan of musicals, but I have to say that A Chorus Line certainly isn't a bad movie. Just be aware of the opinion of those who have already seen the stage show.